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Everybody gets told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of us is that at the earlier stages of life we think we know everything- or to put it more usefully, we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance.

Thomas Pynchon

Why should things be easy to understand?
THOMAS PYNCHON

Easy Philosophy Understand
It all comes down, as it must, to the desires of individual men. Oh, and women too of course, bless their empty little heads.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Blessing Desire Empty Man Woman
There is no real direction here, neither lines of power nor cooperation. Decisions are never really made – at best they manage to emerge, from a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all around assholery.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Best Cooperation Decision Destruction Direction Illusion Management Power Reality Support
If there is something comforting – religious, if you want – about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Comfortable Condition Connection Health Mental Religious Sick Worry
There was no difference between the behavior of a god and the operations of pure chance.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Behavior Belief Chance Difference God Luck Operation Purity
Can’t say it often enough — change your hair, change your life.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Change Enough Hairs Life Yourself
Get too conceptual, too cute and remote, and your characters die on the page.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Character Concept Death Page Writing Yourself
Time is never wasted if you remember to bring along something to read.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Book Reading Time Wasted Time Yourself
You know what a miracle is. Not what Bakunin said. But another world’s intrusion into this one. Most of the time we coexist peacefully, but when we do touch there’s cataclysm.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Existence Fantasy Intrude Miracle Mission Peace Spiritual Time Touch World Yourself
Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Dreams Essence Stupidity
Length is usually intensity. Not time.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Intense Time
Teamwork,” Koteks snarled, “is one word for it, yeah. What it really is is a way to avoid responsibility. It’s a symptom of the gutlessness of the whole society.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Avoid Responsibility Society Symptom Team Word Work
But with a sigh he had released her hand, while she was so lost in the fantasy that she hadn’t felt it go away, as if he’d known the best moment to let go.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Fantasy Feeling Hands Let Go Lost Moments
It is simply wrong to begin with a theme, symbol or other abstract unifying agent, and then try to force characters and events to conform to it.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Beginning Character Force Simplicity Try Wrong
Like so many named places in California it was less an identifiable city than a grouping of concepts–census tracts, special purpose bond-issue districts, shopping nuclei, all overlaid with access roads to its own freeway.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Freedom Identity Name Place Purpose Road
Someday it’ll all be done by machine. Information machines.
THOMAS PYNCHON

Computer Information Technology Transformation

Everybody gets told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of us is that at the earlier stages of life we think we know everything- or to put it more usefully, we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance.

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Everybody gets told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of us is that at the earlier stages of life we think we know everything- or to put it more usefully, we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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